piety and the magnanimity of his resignation; all which produced so bad an effect, that deputies who were devoted to him, had warned him of it; but that no change could be effected.'

At the storming of the Tuileries, the personal attendants of the royal family, and among them Madame Campan, were placed in circumstances of extreme peril. Her description of that event is exceedingly interesting.

The Marseillois began by driving several Swiss, who yielded without resistance, from their posts. A few of the assailants fired upon them: some of the Swiss officers, unable to contain themselves at seeing their men fall thus, and perhaps thinking the King was still at the Tuilleries, gave the word for a whole battalion to fire. The aggressors were thrown into disorder, and the Carousel was cleared in a moment; but they soon returned, spurred on by rage and revenge. The Swiss were but eight hundred strong; they fell back into the inAterior of the castle; some of the doors were battered in by the guns, others broken through with hatchets; the populace rushed from all quarters into the interior of the palace; almost all the Swiss were massacred; the nobles flying through the gallery which leads to the •Louvre, were either stabbed or pistolled, and the bodies were thrown out of the windows. M. Pallas, and M. de Marchais, ushers of the King's chamber, were killed in defending the door of the council chambers; many others of the King's servants fell victims to their attachment to their master. I mention these two persons in particular, because, with their hats pulled over their brows, and their swords in their hands, they exclaimed, as they defended themselves with unavailing, but praiseworthy courage: "We will not survive-this is our post; our duty is to die at it." M. Diet behaved in the same manner at the door of the Queen's bed-chamber; he experienced the same fate. The Princess de Tarente had fortunately opened the door of the entrance into the apartments; otherwise the dreadful band, seeing several women collected in the Queen's saloon, would have fancied she was among us, and would have immediately massacred us, if their rage had been increased by resistance. However, we were all about to perish, when a man with a long beard came up, exclaiming, in the name of Petion:" Spare the women; don't disgrace the nation!" A particular circumstance placed me in greater danger than the others. In my confusion, I imagined, a moment before the assailants entered the Queen's apartments, that my sister was not among the groupe of women collected there; and I went up into an entresol, where I supposed she had taken refuge, to induce her to come down, fancying it of consequence to our safety that we should not be separated. I did not find her in the room in question; I saw there only our two femmes de chambre, and one of the Queen's two heydukes, a man of great height, and a perfectly martial physiognomy. I cried out to him: "Fly, the footmen and our people are already safe." "I cannot," said the man to me; "I am dying of fear." As he spoke, I heard a number of men rushing hastily up the stair-case: they threw themselves upon him, and I saw him assassinated. I ran

.

towards the staircase, followed by our women. The murderers left the heyduke to come to me. The women threw themselves at their feet, and held their sabres. The narrowness of the staircase impeded the assassins; but I had already felt a horrid hand thrust down my back, to seize me by my clothes, when some one called out from the bottom of the staircase: "What are you doing above there?" The terrible Marseillois, who was going to massacre me, answered by a hem! the sound of which will never escape my memory. The other voice replied only by these words: "We don't kill women." I was on my knees: my executioner quitted his hold of me, and said, "Get up, you jade'; the nation pardons you." The brutality of these words did not prevent my suddenly experiencing an indescribable feeling, which partook almost equally of the love of life, and the idea, that I was going to see my son, and all that was dear to me, again. A moment before, I had thought less of death, than of the pain which the steel, suspended over my head, would occasion me. Death is seldom seen so close, without striking his blow. I can assert, that upon such an occasion, the organs, unless fainting ensues, are in full activity, and that I heard every syllable uttered by the assassins, just as if I had been calm. Five or six men seized me and my women, and having made us get upon benches placed before the windows, ordered us to call out, "The nation for ever!

919

Vol. II. pp. 250-253.

After many hair-breadth escapes, Madame Campan procured an asylum for the night, and on the following day joined the Queen at the Feuillans. Shortly after, she was separated from the royal family. The Memoirs terminate with a description of the embarrassment occasioned to her by the possession of a portfolio containing important papers, and with a brief notice of the trial and execution of Louis XVI.

Our readers will have perceived from the tenor of this article, and the character of our extracts, that we have been interested by these Memoirs. They are the production of a clever and observant woman, who, though not a principal performer, was much behind the scenes, and made good use of her opportunities of observation. Making due allowance for her partiality to the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, we are inclined to place great reliance on the accuracy of her details. The Editor's notes are sensible and illustrative.

Art. IV. Fifteen Years in India; or Sketches of a Soldier's Life. Being an Attempt to describe Persons and Things in various Parts of Hindostan. From the Journal of an Officer in His Majesty's Service. 8vo. pp. 540. London. 1822.

T

HIS is very light reading; and to amuse has evidently been the Author's aim, in the strange and whimsical tissue VOL. XIX. N.S. 2 K

of anecdote, description, military detail, biography, mythology, and substantial information of which the volume is composed. From the mixture of pleasantry, sometimes running wild, and pensive sentiment, with occasional touches of pathos, as well as from the desultory, disorderly character of the work, we should judge the Author to be, as indeed the Introduction intimates, a son of generous, unhappy Erin. The account he gives of himself, is, that he came home from India, after a long residence there, in a debilitated state of health, with a large family, under the well founded expectation' that solid independency awaited him; but this expectation proving delusive, he retired to a mountain, where he pasted on the ⚫ fireboard of his humble parlour, the singular order of the day issued by Napoleon, when First Consul, against suicide.' Such is the force of example, and such the influence of a great name, that Napoleon's order has, we doubt not, operated to deter from cowardly self-murder, many-possibly hundredson whom the prohibitions of the Supreme Being failed to take effect. The Writer does not seem to have tried whether a Bible on his mantel-piece, would have had the same charm against despondency, as the order pasted on his fireboard. But we must make allowances for the prejudices of an old soldier, accustomed to yield implicit obedience only to military orders. The volume contains sketches of a soldier's life; and the details of personal history with which it is enlivened, and the real actors introduced, constitute not the least attrac tive feature of the book. It is less an account of India, than a fireside story of adventures and travels, which lets us into the knowledge of how Englishmen and soldiers live in India. Some things related, will, of course, be recognised as not very novel information, nor is there much that is highly important, though the whole is abundantly entertaining. The Writer of the Journal, if not a man of the same stamp, in point of enlightened sentiment and reflection, with his brother officer whose "Sketches of India" we noticed in a preceding volume, is far from resembling the old general in Bracebridge Hall, whose personal services were confined to the siege of Seringapatam. The Preface states, that during the period which the Journal embraces, from 1805 to 1819, it was the officer's lot to traverse a great part of the Peninsula, from the Ganges to

the Indus.

"He landed at Madras, and saw part of the Carnatic, joined his regiment in Malabar, and served with it in Mysore and Travancore; after which his fortune led him to Bengal, and a few years afterwards to Bombay, where he was employed with the army in Guzerat, which invaded Kutch-booge for the first time, marched through Katty-war,

and destroyed the fastnesses of the pirates in Okamundel. His corps being then called to join the Poonah subsidiary force, an opportunity was afforded him of seeing a considerable part of the Deckan during the late Mahratta war. The impressions niade upon his mind by the scenes which he beheld in India, are now, with deference, offered to the Public.'

The redacteur of the Journal, we are given to understand, is also a military man, who joined his regiment an ensign, rose in gradation, and served a few campaigns not of an interesting

nature.

We should have been much better pleased if the thread of the narrative had not been so perpetually broken and abruptly renewed. The transitions from the adventures of Charles Thoughtless, to grave history, and again to light description, sometimes remind one of cross readings in a newspaper. To assist our selection, the work has neither table of contents, index, nor headings to the chapters. But we shall endeavour to obtain a few connected extracts. And first, as a specimen of the Author's descriptive powers, we give his account of Calcutta.

The Hoogly, on the eastern bank of which the city of Calcutta stands, is the western arm of the Ganges. In going up this fine river, the observer, if he be a man of sensibility, is strongly affected with what he sees. The luxuriance of nature and the grandeur of the scene please his eye, while the customs and manners of men make his heart bleed. He beholds many an emaciated human being, worn away to the last gasp of lingering existence, brought from a distant residence to expire near the sacred stream; the pains of death are often embittered by forcing the muddy water down his throat; for when the recovery of any person is despaired of, his immediate friends hurry him off to the river, in the hope that the goddess will restore him miraculously to life, if they can force him to drink freely. Should any one die at home, near the Ganges, it would be lamented as a great misfortune. When the grasping dispositions of mankind are considered, and it is recollected that those about a dying person share his property, the various accounts of the numerous murders perpetrated by seeming attention to this shocking custom need not be discredited. The wealthy pitch a tent, partly in the water, to screen the sick from the glare of the sun; in this the patient is placed, sometimes on a low cot, and oftener on the ground, with his head in the stream, there to be restored to health by drinking plentifully, or to die with the certainty of immortal bliss. The poor are seen writhing in the pangs of suffocation, under officious, mistaken kindness of friends, and lying all night in the water.

At the same time he views the smoke ascending in curling volumes from many a funeral pile; and the useful stream bearing away the remains of those whose friends could not afford to burn them. On

each bank his sight is shocked occasionally with dead bodies, rotten and torn by fishes, mouldering to kindred clay on the spot where the tide chanced to cast them, for no man will remove them, it being contamination to touch a dead body whose caste is unknown.

Very few Europeans remain long in vigorous health. Were a country gentleman, in the full enjoyment of all his bodily faculties in this happy climate, to be suddenly transported to St. John's Church in Calcutta, during the performance of divine service in the month of June, he would fancy himself seated among ghosts. He would look upon their sallow countenances with fear, and see the big drops like tears coursing each other on the anxious brow, notwithstanding the large fans suspended overhead, and drawn briskly backwards and forwards, by means of ropes passed from them through the windows of the church, by natives outside, to produce an artificial circulation of air. If he followed any gentleman to his home, he would see him there throw off his coat, and put on a light white jacket, as a relief from his sufferings; and on passing the buryingground beyond Chouringhee, the stranger would there perceive, in the numberless tombs and monuments, ample evidence of the terrible mortality prevailing in the land of his sojourn.

The absence of health is more manifest here than in many other parts of India. Men who follow sedentary employments, that require close mentál attention, are most numerous, and soonest decline, in a province which is peculiarly inimical to the European constitution; for such quantities of putrescent matter are left by the inundations of the Ganges and Burrumpootre, that they infect the air with malignant vapours, which prove more fatal to strangers than to the natives. This remark is indeed applicable to all Hindostan, in every part of which the European is prematurely wasted by slow but sure degrees, if not assailed by fever or acute hepatitis.'

There is no doubt, however, our Officer adds, that if a proper regimen were observed from the first arrival in the country, health might be much longer preserved. But most young men live in India thoughtlessly and luxuriously as long as they are able. Before they prepare for defence, they are taken by the enemy.'

• Artificial descents to rivers,' continues our Author, 'wharfs, quays, and landing places, are called Ghauts in India. Many of these, on the banks of the sacred Hindoo streams, have magnificent flights of stone steps, leading from pagodas, whose structure, antiquity, and grandeur surprise every beholder. They are distinguished by the appellatives of gods and goddesses, as "Kallighaut," or, " Champaul Ghaut," the latter of which is an insignificant one, but it is the place where Europeans generally land, on arriving in Calcutta, and embark, on leaving it for their native soil. Thence along the left bank of the Hoogly, there is a fine promenade to Fort William, whose spreading trees, planted on each side, lend a refreshing shade, through